Hey,
My name is A*** M***, my account was recently disabled by facebook. I felt alone in my situation until I found people in the same boat as me, thanks to your interesting facebook blog. I was disabled because I have lively discussions on the largest facebook group ever’s wall. Before I came it was not a very nice place, however as a bunch of regulars will note, (regular meaning on atleast 4 hours a day), I changed the discussion to postive. Quickly, I began getting warnings I was reaching the post limit, not realized I had 3 strikes and your out. So, I got the warning, went to bed, and the in the morning I had been given another strike for some reason, a red message appered saying that my account was in jeporday of being deleted. So I made, a joke with my sense humor, and my skills of turning the wall around, and i made a group and invited the wonderful friends I had made on largest group ever to join! But, BAM with in 5 seconds of making it, I was disabled. I’m impulsive when I get pissed off, (thanks to my adhd)..and so i wrote really sketchy/weird and angry emails probably not the best idea.

So yeah, that’s how I got disabled. 12 hours still nothing from facebook.
I tried to explain them how important it was to me, since I am not intellectually simulated in my school, and how meeting other smart colege students was imporant to me. But it probably didn’t come out that way, in fact right now..facebook is probably reading my emails and laughing.

Well, sorry for bothering you with my story,
but your blog was very interesting, and gave me hope
that maybe my account will come back.

It seems Facebook has limits for how many posts one can submit. Seems a little odd for a social networking website to create activity limits, but Facebook is known for its surprises.

Facebook’s crackdown on questionable profiles has been previously noted here. Not surprisingly, it continues.

Wilfred Drew, a librarian at SUNY Morrisville, lost the account he set up for the library. Facebook’s response:

Hey,

This account has been disabled, as we do not allow profiles for organizations or other non-human entities. If you would like me to change the name on this account to your own, I can do that and reconfirm it. Thanks for your understanding.

Jerry
Facebook

On a side note, Drew received a B.S. from Cornell University according to his resume.

What am I supposed to tell all my facebook faithful who depend on me for their heaven points? And my apostle Karen? A great injustice has been committed toward the inter-webs by that great gloved hand called censorship!!

The Harvard-spawned fascists who control facebook.com apparently have begun purging the site of one of its best features: funny profiles.

It seems they decided that Aaron Burr didn’t do his job properly the first time (did you expect any better from a Princeton alum?) and deleted Alexander Hamilton’s profile. Over 1200 Columbians and 1000 other students nationwide lost a dear friend. I attempted to log in today and received this gloating error message: “Your account has been disabled by an administrator. Please contact info@facebook.com for more information.”

The MIT student Anders Kaseorg emailed Facebook on March 28:

It’s not a fake name at all. I already have an account–I’m Anders Kaseorg. I just also have an account for my cow, who really is called the “Cow with No Name” (long story). This account represents my cow: it uses a (working) email address specific to my cow, has profile details about my cow, and friends people who are acquainted with my cow.

If you’re actually shutting down accounts like this, why are you picking on my poor cow instead of the 49 members of the self-proclaimed “Fake-ass People” group? Accounts such as “Charles Vest” really *could* be mistaken for the real former MIT president. But my cow never hurt anyone.

Anders

The response he received:

Hey,

Facebook is intended to facilitate communication between real people, and your cow is not a real person. We are working on taking down all of these other fake accounts as well, but as I’m sure you can imagine, this takes awhile. Thanks again for your understanding and cooperation in this.

Well, it’s official now. The account was not reactivated due to a glitch or an error. It was in fact due to the email conversation held with Christina, the Facebook customer service representative. An email confirmation of this arrived today.

From: Paul from Facebook:

Hi,

After further review, we are going to allow you to continue to use this account under the name you have listed. Your account is presently active. Let me know if you have any trouble using it. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Experiment over? That just did not seem right. Something had to be done. A string of emails followed.

To: info@facebook.com (6/14):

Your account has been disabled by an administrator. Please contact info@facebook.com for more information.

From: Christina from Facebook (6/15):

Hey,

Fake names are a violation of our Terms of Use. If you would like to use this profile again, just get back to us with your real name and we will reactivate the account for you.

Thanks for contacting Facebook.

—
Christina
Customer service representative
Facebook Team

To: Christina from Facebook (6/15):

I apologize for violating your Terms of Use. However, the Terms of Use (or any other section of the website) do not specify what criteria is used to determine whether a name is fake or real. Please clarify this for me.

Also, while a member of Facebook is sent an email about most events, such as a friend request or a wall posting, no alert is sent out upon termination of the account. Why am I expected to respect your rules while you fail to show me even minimal courtesy?

Thank you in advance for addressing my concerns.

From: Christina from Facebook (6/20):

Hi,

Please provide me with your real name and I’ll be more than happy to reactivate your account.

Thanks,

—
Christina
Customer service representative
Facebook Team

To: Christina from Facebook (6/22):

I fully understand your request.

What I need from you is the criteria used for determining whether a name is fake or real. I would like the information necessary to avoid going through this process again.

I can easily find numerous fake accounts on Facebook. I would like to know why my account was removed and those are still active. If for some reason you are not aware of their existence and I provide you with a list of account IDs I am referring to, will those accounts be removed?

Thank you in advance for addressing my concerns.

From: Christina from Facebook (6/26):

Hi,

Your profile was reported to us and upon investigation was deemed fake. To avoid going through this process again please provide me with your real name.

Thanks!

—
Christina
Customer service representative
Facebook Team

To: Christina from Facebook (6/27):

Hi Christina,

I feel like we are going in a circle here. I will try to rephrase my previous question one more time. Please answer it this time.

How do you report a profile and what is necessary to have it removed? I would like to help you in your quest to keep Facebook “real”.

Thank you.

From: Christina from Facebook (7/5):

Hi,

Any user can report a profile, picture, group, event, message etc by clicking on the ‘report’ tab on that page. Upon further investigation it was found that the account was fake. The email address does not match the registered name.

Thanks,

—
Christina
Customer service representative
Facebook Team

To: Christina from Facebook (7/5):

Hi.

Thank you for clarifying the procedure for reporting fake profiles.

The email address that was listed on my Facebook account and the one I used to sign in to Facebook is the same one I have been using to correspond with you. Which part of it does not match?

So far you have not provided me with any evidence that would indicate that my profile is “fake” in any way. I would like to have my account restored until you can prove otherwise.

Thank you.

The world may never know if it was due to this conversation or some glitch in the system, but the profile was reactivated a few days ago. An apology is certainly in order if so many emails were necessary to get to this point.

President Lehman’s fake facebook profile has been removed, while Skorton’s reportedly non-fake profile remains. But will the blog continue? And just who is redprez?

Luckily one of those questions can now be answered. After a lengthy email conversation with Facebook, Jeffrey Lehman ’77 is back for an encore. But how did this happen? And why did it take so long? Stay tuned for answers to those questions.